The owner of a converted oast house in Kent finally has a granite worktop in her kitchen in the former round kiln of the building, thanks to County Stone Granite of Walberton in Sussex.

It was a job other companies had shied away from, which had left the kitchen with a round black Indian granite top on an island site but no granite on the perimeter surface.

The curve made templating, fabricating and installing the stone tricky.

Templating took a full day. “This was probably the biggest template I’ve done,” says templater and fitter Lee Arnell. The fabrication process took just as long. The top was made in four, large sections on the company’s Gisbert FG-250 workcentre, finished by hand.

Because of the awkward shapes and access, the tops had to be lifted by hand to double the normal height to carry into the oast. There was only the worktop to fit, but it took a full day to complete the job.

Lee: “The customer was ecstatic. Where she’d had people turn her down, the panic button started to go. She was over the moon.”